Human Resource Blog

Converting from Paper to Digital

We are chatting about scanning all our HR employee files and currently have approximately 600 employees (with employee, benefit, safety training files). As well as separately kept W-4, I-9s, etc. I am curious how long a project like this could take, what types of costs could be incurred, what types of document security levels will be necessary and most importantly - should the hard paper copy be kept after scanning? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

The good news is that federal and state regulations permit you to keep all payroll and personnel records in digital form — even the I-9 forms and supporting documents. So once all your documents are scanned, you can discard the originals.

Be aware that you must keep digital personnel files as secure as you would paper documents. This means that only authorized personnel will be able to view the HR documents, and medical information would be kept in a separate digital file, accessed only by specific individuals.  

How long the process will take depends upon your technology. To access this, scan one average personnel file, and multiply the amount of time that takes by 600. Because this is a large project outside the scope of your usual operations, you may want to hire temporary employees to handle this.

Note that a few states would set further limits on this process.